STOCKHOLM — Martin Gerber stopped Matt Duchene in the eighth round of a shootout after Reto Suri scored his second goal of the tiebreaker and Switzerland stunned Canada 3-2 in the world hockey championships Sunday night.

Gerber stopped 19 shots in regulation and seven of eight in the shootout for Switzerland, 2-0 after upsetting Sweden in its opener.

“This was a good boost for our young team,” Gerber said. “A shootout is always a gamble, sometimes you can be more patient than the player.”

Mike Smith made 26 saves for Canada and stopped six of eight attempts in the shootout.

“He gave us an opportunity to win it,” Canadian coach Lindy Ruff said about Smith. “You can’t criticize that. We had our opportunities and didn’t take advantage of it. You’d probably pick some of the talent we had shooting to win you the game and it didn’t go our way.”

Denis Hollenstein and Nino Niederreiter scored in regulation for Switzerland, and Andrew Ladd and Matt Read countered for Canada.

In Helsinki, the United States beat Latvia 4-1 to improve to 2-0. Tim Stapleton, Bobby Butler, David Moss and Matt Hunwick scored and Ben Bishop made 20 saves.

“We kind of woke up when they scored. And I was lucky to be in the right spot at the right time,” Stapleton said. “It’s always an honor to score for this team.”

The diminutive Stapleton is the only player on the team not playing in North America.

“Two years ago I was not very good, but the last year in the Russian pro league KHL has definitely prepared me for this type of hockey,” said Stapleton, who had 24 goals and 16 assists for Dynamo Minsk.

Also in Helsinki, Ilya Kovalchuk scored three goals in Russia’s 4-1 victory over Germany, and France beat Austria 3-1. In the other games in Stockholm, Patrick Thoresen scored the winning goal in Norway’s 3-2 victory over Denmark, and Belarus beat Slovenia 4-3.